Just out of interest

Why is it that Liverpool and Gareth Barry are demanding Villa "Get real" over them digging their heals in over their £20m valuation of their England international whilst it's okay for his potential new employers to sit back and demand £15m and £18m for two players who aren't even getting near the team.

Is it something to do with Villa not being a Champions League team and therefore almost obliged to meekly stand aside and give away their asset. The grubby arrogance of Barry, Benitez et al is appalling.

When you look at the way the likes of Barry, Bentley etc go around whoring themselves in order to line their own pockets (under the guise of them 'needing' Champions League football) and the way richer clubs just blatantly go around tapping up the best players from any team that gets near them makes you so disillusioned. Modern football really does make you sick sometimes.

Thank God we've got a good, honest footy festival going on in Austria and Switzerland. Last nights game was another enjoyable one...Turkey took Germany to the cleaners. How the Germans got through that game was beyond me (although saying that they really should have had a penalty in the second half). It was all strangely predictable once Rustu had his moment of madness...Even when Semih was shushing the crowd after he'd made it 2-2 you could still see the inevitable happening...this was, after all, the Germans. The main thing to come from the night was how ace the BBC are, the feed went down from the central broadcast point Austria after huge thunderstorm hit Vienna...the BBC managed to keep us in touch and then must have got a feed direct for Switzerland and put the 5live commentary over it. Top stuff

So German v Spain or Russia....very interesting.